Ferranti Mark 1 - Oldest Recorded Computer Music

Oldest Recorded Computer Music

Included in the Ferranti Mark 1's instruction set was a hoot command, which enabled the machine to give auditory feedback to its operators. The sound generated could be altered in pitch, a feature which was exploited when the Mark 1 made the earliest known recording of computer music, playing a medley which included "God Save the King", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", and "In the Mood". The recording was made by the BBC towards the end of 1951, and the programming was done by Christopher Strachey, a maths teacher at Harrow and a friend of Alan Turing. It was not however the first computer to have played music – CSIRAC, Australia's first digital computer, achieved that with a rendition of Colonel Bogey.

Read more about this topic:  Ferranti Mark 1

Famous quotes containing the words oldest, recorded, computer and/or music:

    We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail.
    Greil Marcus (b. 1945)

    The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.
    Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)

    Family life is not a computer program that runs on its own; it needs continual input from everyone.
    Neil Kurshan (20th century)

    Poetry
    Exceeding music must take the place
    Of empty heaven and its hymns....
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)